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Toleration and Conscience

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2024

Henry St John O.P.
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At the meeting of the World Council of Churches at Evanston in 1954 it was reported in the newspapers that a movement, within its organization, was pressing for a motion against the Roman Catholic Church condemnatory of its alleged persecuting activities against Protestants in such countries as Spain and Colombia. The motion was successfully shelved by the skilled and tactful chairmanship of the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Fisher. It is very generally admitted, and often publicly stated, by leaders of the Ecumenical movement, that any thought or action on its part which definitely excluded the Roman Catholic Church because of the difficulties involved, would damage its Ecumenical character and tend to render it pan-Protestant and anti-Roman. Nevertheless, even within the movement, there are Protestant pressure-groups which are anti-Catholic, especially because of the charges of persecuting intolerance made against the Church, and these would like to see it ousted from consideration in the work of the World Council for Christian Unity.

But even where alleged persecuting intolerance is not seen as a reason for the complete exclusion of Roman Catholicism from the ultimate concept of Christian unity, this charge undoubtedly causes concern even amongst those non-Catholic leaders who are otherwise well disposed towards the Church; there is always the lurking suspicion that if and when Rome gets the power it will of its very nature turn persecutor. This suspicion is strengthened by a prevalent belief that the only orthodox doctrine of religious freedom permissible to Catholics is that based upon the distinction between thesis and hypothesis.

Type
Research Article
Information
Blackfriars , Volume 42 , Issue 494 , July 1961 , pp. 288 - 297
Copyright
Copyright © 1961 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 This belief underlies the exposition of the problem of religious education in the nineteenth century in a recently published book, Man as Churchman, The Wiles Lectures by N. W. Sykes, Dean of Winchester; Cambridge University Press 1060.

2 Roman Catholicism and Religious Liberty by A. F. Carrillo de Albornoz, published by the World Council of Churches, Geneva, p. 5.

3 Toleration and the Reformation by Joseph Lecler S.J. Professor at the Institut Catholique, Paris; translated by T. L. Weston; Longmans; Vol I 50s., Vol II 63s. The translation reads easily and shows little or no sign of being a translation.

4 The technical theological term for error that is not culpable because beyond the present power of the person conscientiously holding it to eradicate.

5 What follows in this article is the continuation of a friendly exchange between myself and a Protestant correspondent concerning the views just expressed. It arose out of my review of Roman Catholicism and Religious Liberty by A. F. Carrillo de Albornoz in Frontier, Winter Number, IV 1960. The comment and reply is carried on into the Spring Number, I 1961, but for lack of space the Editor was unable to carry it further. Part of my review is incorporated in this article.